Hey Rick,
We have never found a suitable tube that as Konrad points out does not cost a small fortune to roll the material on. So this is our solution. I will say that we all hate rolling this film out. We use a little "tool" that I made many years ago. We are always debating about a better way to do this, but nothing comes of it. I think we will make a second tool in the future so we do not need to reload the master rolls as often, the current tool only holds 4 master rolls, 7 would be better and a bit more spacing.
We have debated a much more complex tool that would allow us to roll the film without a cardboard roll at all, or maybe make up a roll from paper, but I think these would allow the film to smash down even flatter in shipping.
The 1.7 roll material you ordered is the toughest to roll out cleanly, especially in longer lengths. Heck, our supplier occasionally botches the job and sends us a worthless messed up roll.
We will keep putting thought to do this job better, but for now I'll ask the guys to be a bit more careful with the packaging in the box.
-Wayne
p.s. Thank you very much for the feedback.
p.p.s. When I was first starting up the business in my garage, I used to roll this stuff out on my floor after cleaning the floor carefully!! That was a real pain and always had some dog hair etc.. After doing that a couple of times I built the rolling tool.